Posts Tagged frosh

I was having one of those low energy, low enthusiasm days. Not the typical “Ugh, I’m tired and that coffee didn’t do the trick” kind, either. The scarily bad kind. The “This is all pointless and I’ve got nothing to offer” kind.

I was going through the motions with my 9th grade English class – some silent reading, some grammar stuff – and then it was time to finish reading “Cask of Amontillado.” I looked over my notes from last year and saw that I had them reading it in small groups, taking notes on setting and mood together. I had made a note then that it had worked well, and I was honestly looking forward to getting “offstage” and letting them figure out the story for themselves.

But before launching them into groups, I gave them an option. I said we can read it together as a class or in small groups. I do this a lot when I think I know what they’ll say. When students believe they are navigating, I think they might be more interested in where their ship is headed. So I was sure they’d all choose groups. Of course, I was wrong. To make sure it wasn’t just the loud students who yelled out “whole class,” I asked every single student to vote, one by one, and they all said “whole class.” Peer pressure aside, I think they actually wanted this. This is my ridiculously small class: (don’t hate me) 19 students. We had begun reading the story during the previous class, and they said they had recognized that it would be hard to read it on their own.

So I was to remain onstage. I had them take out their notes so they could record details of setting for an upcoming essay. My enthusiasm level was about to flatline, but I grabbed the book, pulled a chair into the middle of the room, sat down, and began to read.

And everything changed.

As I read to them, stopping often to ask for paraphrases of tricky sentences or to make sure they could visualize what Poe is describing, two unexpected things happened. They remained engaged, and I began to enjoy myself.

I couldn’t help it. It’s a great story, and as I delved into it with them I couldn’t help but get excited. Like when I read this exchange, for example:

He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled.

“I drink,” he said, “to the buried that repose around us.”

“And I to your long life.”

Shudder. Even though this might be the 17th time I’ve read that, I still shuddered. And when I hinted at its irony to my students, I saw that some of them had joined me.

It happened again a moment later, when Montresor removes the trowel from his cloak to prove, in a twisted jest, that he is a “mason.”

When we finally got to the tiny “interior recess” at the “most remote end of the crypt” where Montresor chains Fortunato to the wall, we stopped at length to make sure we had Poe’s dimensions right: “in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven.” I roughly marked out this space in the middle of the room so that the students could see it was the size of a closet. When Fortunato “reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered,” I had a student demonstrate by walking blindly into the wall in the back of the room (he’s okay).

All the while, students are copying down descriptions of setting to use for their essays, but they’re also reading and responding to the story. “That’s messed up!” or “This dude is twisted!” or “I’d be so scared.”

How often do I wish that they can do that kind of simple multi-tasking? How often do I wish they would actually pay attention to what we are discussing and see if they find any value in it?

And what was the brilliant, engaging use of technology here? A textbook, a notebook, a pencil. Now, I used plenty of technology to set it up. We looked at pictures of catacombs online and we’ll use Popplet later to outline our essays. But for the actual story, we turned off the projector and pretty much had a good old-fashioned story time.

The success of that kind of lesson every now and again reminds me why some veteran teachers are so resistant to school or district initiatives to incorporate technology into their teaching. Sometimes we are led to believe that they want us to use tons of brand new technology every single day. Sometimes that might be what they actually want. But it shouldn’t be, and I think teachers are sometimes afraid of giving up the kind of teaching that they know works for a lot of kids – and for them. Besides burning out those expensive bulbs in our projectors, we (teachers and students) need a break from the new stuff to get back to the most powerful tools we really have: great stories.

Oh, and I even tried to play a youtube recording of Vincent Price reading the story, but the students all complained that he was too hard to understand. So score another point for the live reader (their teacher).

So while I was slightly disappointed when they asked me to read it – and I made fun of them for being babies who need their storytime – in the end it saved me. When the bell rang I was on a high. That story is just too good. And seeing it get through to a room full of reluctant readers is really why I got into this gig. I know I’m supposed to blog about technology here, but this no-tech day ended up feeling like a revelation to me.

Like this:

I went through a phase – and I’m sure I’m not the only one – when I couldn’t help but try every new Ben & Jerry’s flavor as soon as I saw one. Graham cracker swirl and marshmallows? Gotta have that (so good). Peach cobbler? How could I not try it?

But those days are over. It was financial forces that killed that ongoing experiment, which could indeed be ongoing since they don’t seem to be slowing down with the new flavors (Schweddy Balls? Really?). The great thing about cutting those fancy pints out of my budget was that I was reintroduced to the economical yet outstanding Breyer’s chocolate.

After tasting all those wacakdoo, cluster-filled flavors, regular chocolate ice cream still holds its own. It reminds me that I don’t really need anything else for dessert. Ever.

That’s what using plain ol’ Google was like for me today. I was reading Roald Dahl’s “Man From the South” to my 9th graders. I was guiding them through some note-taking on literary terms, so I had the projector hooked up to a Word document where I was modeling the notes. But that allowed for the quick researching of unknown words and references that may have given my students some invaluable, visual context.

Examples: The creepy old man who shows up at the hotel pool is “immaculately dressed in a white suit” and a “large creamy Panama hat.” Not one student knew what that looked like. So in 5 seconds, we were all able to see.

Since we were working on analyzing indirect characterization, this was incredibly helpful beyond the surface level of visualizing the character. When I prompted them for inferences we might make based on the description, one student offered that he seemed “suspicious’ because the wide brim of the had could be hiding his eyes.

We later learn that he is wearing “white buckskin shoes.” What are those? Here they are.

And his crocodile cigar case? That might have looked something like this:

And I think knowing what that looks like helps you realize just how utterly creepy of a character Dahl created here.

Pretty simple, but pretty powerful. Of course, I still feel like I have to try that flavor with the fudge covered potato chip clusters, just like there are all kinds of things I’d love to do with iPads that I don’t have. But I’m about to serve myself a bowl of chocolate ice cream, and I have a feeling it’ll be pretty powerful, too.

Like this:

Man. I was so excited to see how quickly my seniors ran with Edmodo yesterday, but my frosh brought me back down to earth. They are just so much younger. I should have taken the advice I saw on the Edmodo blog and given them all “read only” status to start. With the ability to post a note to the whole class, many students couldn’t resist merely typing the word “poooooooooooop” over and over again. Sigh.

It is amazing, though, to think of all that growth and maturity that happens in these three short years, for most kids. And that, then, hammers home the sometimes-crushing feeling of responsibility to make sure that said growth really does happen, and that our students grow in a positive direction.

Also, I have a lot of 9th graders who don’t have computers or internet at home, so I won’t be able to make online homework the only option. That’s okay, I think. I’m afraid, though, of those students feeling left out when we might look at work other students have done online (which is so much easier to look at as a class with the projector).